Saturday, 8 September 2012

Prom 75: VPO/Haitink - Haydn and Strauss, 7 September 2012

Royal Albert Hall

Haydn – Symphony no.104 in D major,‘London’

Strauss – Eine Alpensinfonie

London
Brass (offstage)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Bernard Haitink (conductor)

What a joy to hear Haydn performed as
music – and as symphonic music every inch as rigorous as that of Beethoven! The
number of conductors alive who are able and willing to do so is small, but
Bernard Haitink may certainly be counted amongst them. It does no harm, of
course, when the orchestra is the Vienna Philharmonic, which will most likely
decline to cooperate if a conductor attempts ‘authenticke’ – which, as we must never
cease to remind ourselves, is nothing of the sort – perversity. The gravity of
the first movement introduction and its thematically generative role were
brought out with near perfection, Haydn’s score sounding extremely close to The Creation, which it is. It would have been well nigh impossible, here
and elsewhere, to conceive of more cultivated string playing. The exposition
proper (repeated) and indeed the rest of the movement showed ‘monothematicism’
for what it is: far more an expression of thematic rigour, of an especial tightness
of motivic construction, of every note being essential, than a restriction upon
melodic invention. It is almost always a misnomer, but we are probably stuck
with it, so may as well make the most of the situation. For the argument was
finely articulated – in more than one sense – throughout; it may be a hoary
cliché, but in Haitink’s hands, the music seemed simply to speak for itself.

The slow movement bore more obvious
signs of Haitink’s recent Beethoven, not always for the better, for it was
really quite brisk indeed. The music can
work at such a tempo, just about, but the problem was really that it did not
smile. Sir Colin Davis knows how to accomplish that; so does Pierre Boulez,
whose wonderful VPO recording – no, it is not a figment of my imagination! –
lacks nothing in true Haydnesque grandeur either. Still, there was undeniable
symphonic rigour to Haitink’s reading, not least in its delineation of the
composer’s complex yet seemingly effortless counterpoint. (Not for nothing did
HC Robbins Landon observe that Haydn was the last composer for whom the fugue
was a natural means of expression as opposed to a tour de force. If an exaggeration, it is a pardonable exaggeration.)
The third movement certainly did not drag, but remained a minuet rather than a
scherzo manqué. Again, Haydn’s
compositional accomplishment, his sheer inventiveness, came unexaggeratedly to
the fore. Here, as in the previous movements, Haitink’s use of silence told,
putting one in mind of his Bruckner. If the trio sounded close to Beethoven in
its thematic working out, that is only because it genuinely is. The drone bass
of the finale sounded, unsurprisingly, as a musical necessity rather than an ‘effect’,
as it almost certainly would in an Harnoncourt-style freak show. It set the
tone for the dynamism of the rest of the movement: everything necessary,
everything connected. What a signing off this is to one of the greatest of all
symphonic careers!

Attacks upon Strauss’s Alpine Symphony are, if anything, still
more tedious than those suffered by many other of Strauss’s works. Anyone is
free not to ‘like’ it, of course; liking, let alone love, cannot be commanded.
But failing to grasp its structure and considering it simply in pictorial terms
marks a failure, albeit a failure that may well be attributable to poor
performances. Listen, say, to Mravinsky but once, and you will never have that
excuse again. One might say the same of Haitink and the VPO. Very fond though I
may be of Christian Thielemann’s recording with this orchestra, Haitink’s
intent upon symphonism, different from Haydn’s and yet at times harking back to
Classical roots, arguably stands closer to the requirements of the defence.

Even when relishing the dark Wagnerian
tones of the opening, Haitink’s reading was far more than merely ‘atmospheric’.
Likewise the glorious sunrise. (Though we tend to listen to Strauss far more
for the setting than the rising of the sun, as Karajan acknowledged when
claiming that he conducted this work for the sake of the Epilogue.) Ascent and
later descent were as symphonic as I can recall; we can deal in Nietzschean
metaphor here, and doubtless should, but we can equally deal in post-Lisztian,
even post-Beethovenian form. And those golden horns, the sweetness of those
Viennese strings...! The performance lacked nothing in pictorial terms, whether
at the waterfall, or when hearing from the cowbells or the wind-machine, but
those terms never became the point. Climaxes told, but were never milked. To what
may for some have been a surprising extent, much of Strauss’s score emerged as chamber-like,
even as soloistic, as a symphony by Mahler. The sickly sweetness of the
phantasmagorical ‘Vision’ was finely judged: undoubtedly present and
meaningful, but without indulgence. Organ entries sometimes sounded a little
abrupt, block-like; I could not help but wonder whether some judicious use of
the swell pedal, or at least more imaginative registration, might have helped,
but if that is the only real criticism I can offer... Finally, the glow of the
Epilogue simply sounded ‘right’: historically as well as scenically evocative.
The lights were going out all over Europe; their relighting we still await.

4 comments:

We might take Strauss's own comments on the Alpine Symphony into consideration... when the Korngolds visited, the young Erich saw the score open in Strauss's study. 'Ah yes,' Strauss said to father and son, 'one must always keep one's trivialities close.' That said, like many of Strauss's lesser moments, it has a hold on me, as it is so much greater than other composers' real trivialities.

Did you listen to the Haydn? It was incompetent - never mind 'interpretation', technically it was a mess. The Plovdiv Philharmonic (if there is one) could get through that symphony with fewer mishaps than the VPO managed. For goodness sake, how absurd.